Gobbler gobbles up Avid veterans

Four key Avid staffers, including company stalwart Bobby Lombardi, are reported to have left the company to join Gobbler, the cloud-based storage start-up, according to a story posted on the Pro Tools Expert website on Wednesday 14 May.

PTE wrote: “[Bobby] Lombardi has been at the centre of many of the key developments within Digidesign/Avid and has been regarded as a tour de force within Avid, not only being involved in key products like Pro Tools and Eleven Rack, but Lombardi was also moved in to deal with the fall-out after the closure of the entire Sibelius team in the UK.

“However the largest blow for Avid will be the fact that Lombardi was a central player in the new Avid Everywhere initiative, his role was described as: Design Lead for Avid’s next generation creative products in collaboration, distribution, and online private and public monetisation of digital assets; [and] Product Management lead for metadata and rights management strategy.”

The Avid Everywhere platform is the vision of new CEO Louis Hernandez Jr and was officially launched at the NAB show in Las Vegas recently (pictured).

In a statement posted on Thursday 16 May on the official Sibelius forum page, Avid veteran Sam Butler assured Sibelius users that the personnel changes would not affect software development: “Although it's sad to see Bobby and others leave Avid, I'd like to reassure you that there's no change to the direction of Sibelius or our other products and that Joe Pearson (Product Designer) and I are continuing to plan the development the next generation of notation applications and solutions,” said Butler.

Butler went on to note: “The Sibelius team is growing. We're looking to bringing on new developers and we've recently added a new tester to the team too.“

Approached for confirmation of the appointments at Gobbler, company co-head Chris Kantrowitz said: “Right now we have no comment and nothing to announce.”

Avid senior product manager Bobby Lombardi has been installed as head of product development for Sibelius following the controversial UK office closure. Does he have what it takes to quell the fury of the ‘Save Sibelius’ campaigners?